Background: Effective learning in computer programming courses has been a constant challenge for university teachers and has become a relevant competence for current professionals. The literature on gamification in learning presents mixed results, mainly due to problems in instructional design and inconsistency in gamification. Studies with…

Many students need assistance in debugging to achieve progress when they learn to write computer programs. Face-to-face interactions with individual students to give feedback on their programs, although definitely effective in facilitating their learning, are becoming difficult to achieve with ever-growing class sizes. This paper proposes a novel…